16 ms·

Why too much choice is stressing us out

193 points by bootload 11y ago

degenerate 11y ago
At least when it comes to food, a small selection feels curated, as if the grocery owner is vetting this food for me and saying "These are the jams I find worth your time". A supermarket with 8 brands and 38 total selections didn't take the time to help me. I suppose it's like when non-techies walk into Best Buy and there are 40 laptops to choose from, ranging from Atoms/Celerons to various i7 types. We have all done it before on the phone: "anything but the Celeron... yes it's cheaper... but it's slow, just don't get those" - basically we narrow down the selection significantly by saying "at least 4GB ram, i3,i5,i7". The analogy is not perfect because there's a big price difference in laptops. But making the consumer feel "safer" with their choice by eliminating the really bad choices up front lets them shop worry-free. This small selection thing can be bad too, though - I for one hate shopping at Walmart because I know without a doubt that whatever I am purchasing is the absolute lowest common denominator in terms of quality. They might have 2 different types of lawn chairs, and you better believe that both will fall apart just after the 1 year warranty is up. It all comes down to trust; if you trust the store in their selection, you'll enjoy shopping there.
- pimlottc 11y ago
  Indeed, this point came up in a conversation about Whole Foods. Sure, they are often overpriced, and you can find many of the same brands and products in other stores, but by shopping at Whole Foods, you can at least have confidence that any random product on the shelf is at a reasonably high level of quality.
  - osi 11y ago
    That's exactly why my wife likes to shop there. (And Trader Joe's for similar reasons)
webdigi 11y ago
There is an awesome TED talk by Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice. https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c... Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.
- colund 11y ago
  I was just going to post the Google Talk with the same guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ELAkV2fC-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ELAkV2fC-I. Choice is good as long as people don't feel like they need to optimize, but instead feel they can settle for good enough.
  - scholia 11y ago
    The linked story mentions "professor of social theory Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice" and links to his book.
  - barney54 11y ago
    And here some of the other side--that the paradox of choice might be s myth: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-more-why-the-paradox-of-choice-might-be-a-myth/278658/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-...
- adventured 11y ago
  No doubt Barry Schwartz has never lived without choice. He's wrong, and obviously so. Freedom of choice is vastly superior, in every possible way, to the alternative. A nicer Soviet-era grocery store: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWTGsUyv8IE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWTGsUyv8IE The stories are overly plentiful of people that were held in low-choice captivity in the former USSR, breaking down in tears upon seeing western grocery stores. I know several people who lived under Communism in Romania, their experience was identical. I'd suspect that very few people arguing against choice, have ever lived in a situation where they were actually deprived of it. They're essentially spoiled brats.
joosters 11y ago
I just read this article about the lack of choice in cars: https://medium.com/@ade3/the-zombie-mobile-b03932ac971d https://medium.com/@ade3/the-zombie-mobile-b03932ac971d Which effectively makes the same point: it's easier to sell something with fewer choices.
vukmir 11y ago
The standard line is that choice is good for us, that it confers on us freedom, personal responsibility, self-determination, autonomy and lots of other things that don’t help when you’re standing before a towering aisle of water bottles, paralysed and increasingly dehydrated, unable to choose. That's just ridiculous! According to the author, a towering aisle of water battles reduces you to the Buridan's ass.[0] Yes, there are some hard choices that will force you to think hard and put you through emotional hell. Yes, there are choices that will make you stuck in analysis paralysis, but choosing which bottle of water to buy isn't one. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass
- lifeisstillgood 11y ago
  But which bottle of water defines me as a person? Will you judge me badly for choosing water that did not filter through organic soil?
  - mattlutze 11y ago
    Are organic soil filters a core tenant of our tribe? How do I balance my need for sport electrolytes with the inevitable guilt of consumerism that follows?
    - jboons 11y ago
      Just eat your fruits and veggies.
- jamesrom 11y ago
  Nope. Making a simile with Buridan's ass is a strawman. It's not that you wont be able to decide (yes, that would be ridiculous). It's that you will be less satisfied with the choice you make because it's harder for your to quantify the opportunity cost given so many alternatives.
  - vukmir 11y ago
    From the article: you’re standing before a towering aisle of water bottles, paralysed and increasingly dehydrated, unable to choose looks like the definition of Buridan's ass to me. I'm familiar with the Schwartz's paradox of choice, but the author is pushing it too far. Does anyone really agonize over trivial choices such as which bottle of water to buy? Is anyone really getting dehydrated and unable to chose among many alternatives? Does anyone even considers opportunity cost when making such trivial choices? My problem is not with the paradox of choice, my problem is with the author's trivialization of it.
kingkawn 11y ago
its not the choice its the way we make them.
lifeisstillgood 11y ago
We can all reduce our choices upfront, but it seems rare that we let other people explicitly curate our lives. Would anyone here let me for example, set their weekly menu, choose their lunchtime gym sessions, restrict their Netflix choices to my favourite films? Would you basically let me curate your lifestyle? For a fee?
- cantrevealname 11y ago
  Curators of weekly menu: Yelp if you're going out, New York Times "Recipes of the Day" if you're staying home Curator of gym sessions: private fitness trainer you hired Curator of films: Netflix's own "suggestions for you" section, Rotten Tomatoes, movie critics
  - lifeisstillgood 11y ago
    Still too much choice and still I have to decide am I going to choose the NYT, the good housekeeping, the Jamie Oliver, the xyz diet. Still too much choice - much easier to give up a huge chunk of it to someone else - especially in days of online ordering where I just don't have to do anything like go get the ingredients I think the amalgamated curation and default ordering seems ... Interesting
- pjc50 11y ago
  It's not unusual for people to delegate these choices, especially the "menu" and "TV", to a member of their family, when the choice-outcome applies to the whole family and not just the individual.
ck2 11y ago
google "decision fatigue" https://google.com/search?q=decision-fatigue https://google.com/search?q=decision-fatigue fascinating little thing I recently learned about if you find yourself wearing the same clothes often, it's a sign
ohthehugemanate 11y ago
There are so many assumptions and logical problems in this article's reasoning... it's distressing to read. First we assume that choosing to purchase jam is empirically better than choosing not to purchase jam. And we ignore the question of how the jam selection is made, when the supermarket chooses for you: what is driving the supermarket's selection of which single brand to offer? Is it price to quality ratio? Price? Partner deals on other brands? When I start a new jam company, do I aim to make a happy consumer, or a happy grocery store manager? This doesn't seem optimal for the consumer at all. The argument is later 'bolstered' with the example of jeans; we're told that they SHOULD be "the ill-fitting sort", that “The secret to happiness is low expectations.” If you expect shitty jam, the supermarket can remove choice to satisfy your expectation. For that matter, so can the market of jam providers. At last we get the example of pensions, where we can at least agree on the basic point that not choosing is definitely worse than choosing poorly. We're advised that employers should choose for the employees to prevent this outcome. Again we leave aside the question of how the employer selects a 'one-size-fits-all' pension plan. Does she optimize for the best pension for employees, or for the cheapest plan up front? And how does that change the behavior of pension plan companies? Generally, choice in the market is an important driver of improving real and perceived value for consumers. Perhaps there are alternative solutions to 'choice paralysis' that don't involve sacrificing quality. Off the top of my head, expert advisors are a better solution than what the article offers. There are hundreds of wines at my local store, but I have no trouble making a choice with the guidance of the sommelier. There are thousands of health insurance options where I live (in Germany), but I'm confident that I make the right choice for my family with the guidance of my Versicherungsberater (insurance advisor). Interestingly this is a field that is difficult to automate, not least because humans trust human recommendations more than machine ones. I can imagine this author would praise the coming "advisor economy" as the solution to fears of machine-learning-driven unemployment. In short: everyone accepts the premise that "choice paralysis" is real, and that it causes people to make sub-optimal choices. It's an enormous leap however, to get to "therefore having no choice, and expecting shitty outcomes, is the best answer."
- coldtea 11y ago
  >It's an enormous leap however, to get to "therefore having no choice, and expecting shitty outcomes, is the best answer." Only the article never says that. Low expectations here is not a stand-in for "shitty", it's "don't overthink and overanalyze your jam purchase to get some near absolute best etc".
bsmith 11y ago
This reminds me of one of Tim Ferriss' essays, The Choice-Minimal Lifestyle: 6 Formulas for More Output and Less Overwhelm: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2008/02/06/the-choice-minimal-lifestyle-6-formulas-for-more-output-and-less-overwhelm/ http://fourhourworkweek.com/2008/02/06/the-choice-minimal-li... There are quite a few practical tips in there to help decrease the sense of overwhelm from having too many choices.
lucozade 11y ago
When one of my children was about 4 or 5 we visited friends in Abu Dhabi. We went out for brunch in one of the 6* hotels there. The pudding table was enormous with 3 chocolate fountains, piles of cakes, the works. My son went up to the table, stood there for about 3 minutes, then burst into tears. Just the thought of deciding what he wasn't going to eat was too much for him.
- yandreiy88 11y ago
  maybe it was happy tears. :)
VLM 11y ago
Obviously there's an engineer mindset where pulling up a parametric search of RF inductors at an electronic component supplier bringing up over 25K results brings forth a smile and happiness not terror or paralysis. I was thrilled to see over 25K results and with some more parametric searching I found one with a self resonance above 4 GHz and over 100 mA limit and blah blah blah and the GPS preamp ended up working perfectly in the end. It was so comforting seeing 25K results, knowing my project would almost certainly succeed. It certainly extends out of the workplace and into individual life. Choice paralysis might be a legacy declining way of looking at the world, like nationalism or racism or imperialism are no longer acceptable in the current year's Overton window. Its like people who insist they won't talk to machines or won't use the internet to pay bills or won't learn how to read. Well, get used to choice or become obsolete.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  Nationalism is on a global rise, so is imperialism and racism is still healthy attitude towards outsiders worldwide. Seems to me that 6 900 000 000 haven't gotten that memo.
- pjc50 11y ago
  Supermarkets don't have parametric search.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
The Guardian is reading far too much into Tesco's actions. Following the Paradox of Choice, the effect was widely studied and found to not be particularly robust. The classic jam study (cited by this article) failed to replicate. There are various circumstances when having more choices increases sales as well (e.g., a higher priced option that no one takes can cause more sales of the low priced choice). Even the author of "Paradox of Choice" admits the science is far from settled. I've been to Tesco. From a consumer's perspective, it's amazing - I really wish I had a place like Tesco where I am. Most likely the reason Tesco is reducing choices is because stocking more SKUs is expensive, but at the end of the day the customer buys the same quantity of cheese. Choice is fantastic for the consumer, particularly the consumer with minority tastes. If you are an Indian or Nigerian person living in the UK and you are hungry for some home food, Tesco's got you covered. I'm not even going to discuss the blatant cheerleading for state monopolies and Corbyn. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/is-the-famous-paradox-of-choic/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/is-the-famous-parad... http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9cebd444-cd9c-11de-8162-00144feabdc0.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9cebd444-cd9c-11de-8162-00144feabd... http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-more-why-the-paradox-of-choice-might-be-a-myth/278658/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-...
- djaychela 11y ago
  I'm not sure I'd agree. Personally I don't find choice debilatating, but I know plenty of people who do - my girfriend finds it very difficult to make choices, and has to research things to the Nth degree to ensure she's not making a wrong one, and a lot of the kids I teach find options anxiety to be a real problem. However, when faced with an area where there is choice but I have little information (such as buying a given spice in Tesco and there are 3 seemingly equivalent choices) I have experienced this. I'd agree about the tagging on of the Corbyn bit at the end - I don't think it has anything to do with the article - but I'm not sure that the high priced choice you cite is necessarily the same thing?
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    I also know plenty of people who find lack of choice debilitating. Ramanujan - an Indian living in the UK was debilitated by the absence of Idlis. (In the modern world, Tesco has him covered.) I'm certainly unhappy in northwest Delhi when I can't find a decent dosa, pasta or croissant [1]. Minorities exist, and some of them really need those choices that paralyze your girlfriend. I think a better solution is for your girlfriend to learn coping skills than for my ex-girlfriend to suffer with Indian shampoo that doesn't work for African hair. [1] Or at least such things are 1.5 hours away in Khan market.
matt_morgan 11y ago
Freedom of choice is what we got Freedom from choice is what we want https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVGINIsLnqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVGINIsLnqU
rcarrigan87 11y ago
Buying decisions can have so many confounding variables (emotion, status, cost, quality) this article draws some very loose conclusions on relatively little data. Less choice can be an interesting A/B test for a business, but I wouldn't be surprised if results feel more random than this article suggests.
Grue3 11y ago
Why are the bigger stores so popular then? I actually like choosing the product that I think has the best price/quality ratio. I compare prices per unit of weight and everything. In the end I'm satisfied that I made a seemingly rational choice. When there's only one choice I can't help but feel it must be overpriced since there's nothing else to compare it to.
- learnstats2 11y ago
  >In the end I'm satisfied that I made a seemingly rational choice. This is very often a false choice - if you're in one store, you are likely choosing between a Unilever product and a Unilever product, for example.
- k__ 11y ago
  Maybe people just think it's better to have more options? Also, I once read, that more options aren't necessarily bad. For example if you can buy a car as diesel or petrol and red or white, but the color doesn't affect the fuel type, it's okay. But if you could buy a car as diesel or petrol but only the petrol in red or white and the diesel just in white (or a completely different color) this leads to stress, because one decision lets you miss on the other options.
- pjc50 11y ago
  Range isn't quite the same as choice: the smaller the store, the more likely it is to not have a particular product category at all.
- kardos 11y ago
  > Why are the bigger stores so popular then? So you only need to make one stop to get everything you need
Angostura 11y ago
I agree. The other day, I stood in the supermarket contemplating the 20 different types of Colgate toothpaste. Did I want Whitening? No. Sensitive Teeth? No. Those were easy choices. What about the Anti-Cavity version? Now that sounds good. But, but I also have some gum disease, so perhaps Gum Care is the right choice? But what about the formulation that promised Harder Teeth? Perhaps I should just get Colgate Total. But does Total have as much anti-cavity stuff as the Anti-Cavity variant? does it have as much as much gum care stuff as the Gum Care variant? It costs the same as both, so maybe its kind of a bit of everything and not as good as anything. In the end I bought Aquafresh. In the old days I thought that Total was the best I could get - now I'm not so sure.
- buro9 11y ago
  I have done that same dance too many times.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  My ex-girlfriend had the opposite problem. She stood in the market and contemplated only a few choices in shampoo - basically regular and hair fall rescue. She went with regular. Her hair got all messed up - apparently Indian and African hair are actually very different and Africans actually need fancy African shampoo. At the end of the day she did have only one choice - cut her hair short and spend 1000rs/month (plus about 6 hours) having a Nigerian woman give her an (illegal) weave. Choice sucks when you are part of the majority who's needs are catered to.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    (illegal) weave Illegal hairstyles? There has to be a bizarre story behind this.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      Occupational licensing and immigration restrictions mean black ladies need to turn to the black market. Even in the US this is an issue: http://madamenoire.com/501738/texas-federal-judge-rules-hair-braiding-laws-unconstitutional/ http://madamenoire.com/501738/texas-federal-judge-rules-hair...
baldfat 11y ago
I love choice and this article seems to ring true for "most people." Linux is my preferred OS and I hate Apple's structure. I am in the minority. I also like programming languages were there are several different ways to do things (Looking at R) People don't like choice they like "Just Works." To me the is "Just Works" means not that important to me or I don't want to know more than the minimum.
- rndmind 11y ago
  I am with you. I hate apple's structure, I'm strictly a linux user. I disagree with both sides of this article when I say that none of this matters, non-choice exists, you can choose not to participate entirely.
gopowerranger 11y ago
I've been in the fast food business for 30 years (an investment). When I bought someone else's failing location, one of the first things I noticed was that his chip rack had 12 varieties to choose from. One of the first things I did was reduce that choice to the five best selling items. Sales of chips went up about 25% immediately.
- arethuza 11y ago
  Out of interest, how did you choose 5? Did you experiment and measure or observations of other stores?
  - borkabrak 11y ago
    "five best selling items" I assume he meant the five that were the best-sellers at his own store.
  - gopowerranger 11y ago
    Weekly inventory showed how much of each item we sold. The previous owner would keep in stock things that might only have a few purchased per week. His excuse was only to have variety.
stegosaurus 11y ago
I tend to agree in a wider sense (knowing that I could live basically anywhere in the world, for example, makes life seem short and that's stressful). But the supermarket example doesn't work for me at all. Bottled water? Cheapest price tag, done. It's water. Most items can be reduced to this (tinned beans, frozen vegetables, etc) because it's inconsequential to me. Big ticket items like a laptop or a car - sure, that's a decision I'll have to live with for a long time, so it makes sense for me to think long and hard.
afsina 11y ago
Article says: "Not only is Tesco reducing its number of products, but the new leader of the Labour party has just been elected on a political platform that, in part, challenges the rhetoric of choice. Jeremy Corbyn proposes to renationalise not just the rail network but public utilities (gas, electricity and water), partly in the hope that the reduction of choice will provide a fairer, less anxiety-inducing experience for their users." Two things, First, is the author really that naive to think that the reason Corbyn wants to renationalise energy distribution is to reduce the stress on consumer from too many choices? Second I am wondering how many people are anxious about the choice of their rail or energy distribution company. And after sprinkling the almost unrelated Thiel speech, this became an absurd ending to an already shaky article.
- arethuza 11y ago
  The idea of re-nationalising the rail network is actually quite popular: https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/05/11/why-do-people-support-rail-nationalisation/ https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/05/11/why-do-people-support-r... NB I just learned about this yesterday - and was quite surprised. In that respect Corbyn might actually be tapping into a genuine change in public opinion.
  - eertami 11y ago
    The only people who are _for_ privatisation of railways are those wealthy enough that they don't need to use rail travel. Privatising public infrastructure is absurd, especially when you exactly build an adjacent railway line to compete.
    - afsina 11y ago
      Privatizing public infrastructure is not absurd. They just get the management from government's hands with the promise that they can do it with more efficiently. Even if it is far from perfect, they do a better job. Just anecdotal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail#Impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail#...
supersan 11y ago
This is also one of the reasons why it's not a good idea to give 10 different pricing options for your startup. Too much choice and the user gets paralyzed and doesn't buy anything.
chrisan 11y ago
Does this apply to javascript frameworks?
deskamess 11y ago
Canadian residents who have experienced amazon.ca vs amazon.com know this is not true.
- kruhft 11y ago
  Until you fill up your cart and go to checkout and see that none of the items you want to buy will ship to Canada.
cstross 11y ago
The foundation of Apple'a current success is based on this principle -- curation of a selection of best options from a wide possible range makes buying decisions easier for customers than giving them the whole phase space. Before Steve Jobs returned in the late 90s, Apple's Mac range was a hot mess. Apple was trying to compete with the entire range of PC manufacturers, so in addition to licensed third-party Mac clones, they were making multiple ranges of desktop Mac with overlapping specs, on the principle that they could occupy one shelf slot per machine in Fry's or Target with each model. So you had the Centris, the Performa, and the Quadra ranges, with high, middle, and low end machines in each range, educational and professional media authoring variants, and the powerbook range ... Jobs returned and priority #1 was to staunch the cash haemorrhage. Rationalizing the product range and supply chain was a huge part of this. So he drew a simple diagram. X-axis: consumer and professional. Y-axis: desktop and portable. Four models would occupy the entire grid, with roughly three specification levels in each (think Goldilocks and the Three Bears). This gave us the iBook and iMac machines (consumer), and the Powerbook and Mac Pro machines (professional), with differentiation based on CPU speed/memory/disk capacity within each cell. This made the choice of which machine to buy vastly easier on the customer; it was glaringly obvious which model you wanted, all you had to do was decide how much speed/memory/disk capacity you needed, and that was it, rather than trying to figure out what the difference was between a Centris 630 and a Quadra 630AV (hint: RGB video out, 10MHz, and about $250) and so on ... This turned the precipitous decline in Mac sales around. It took years to build up to the current powerhouse, but it staunched the arterial bleeding -- and all by giving the customers less choice, not more.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Note that these are mostly benefits for Apple, not for the consumer. As a consumer, I need a 256GB SSD and 16GB ram. My only choice is to spend $2000 on other macbook pro features I don't need. When I went with a custom PC builder instead (lots of choices - first pick the chassis, then pick the CPU, then pick the RAM, then pick the disk), I got what I needed for $1300. I don't often bill out at $700/hour (probably the total time I spent on this choice), so Apple's lack of choice certainly wouldn't have helped me.
  - 11y ago
klunger 11y ago
"Who wouldn’t rather choose to lie in a bath of biscuits playing Minecraft?" Indeed!
cLeEOGPw 11y ago
I could explain it as "More choices increases possibility space and in turn increases effort required to make a decision. And incomplete consideration leaves the feeling that you may have made not the most optimal decision, and both cases increases stress."
dschiptsov 11y ago
Because too much choice seems like an intuitive negative heuristic, because it contradicts the fundamental Nature's way to avoid redundancy.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Curiously, this was published just this month: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137974 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
lloydde 11y ago
The article reminds me of the superior grocery shopping experience at Trader Joes where they only have one choice in each category. They complement this by having more niche and seasonal items. The physical footprint is much smaller and memorable. Importantly, these details contribute to them being able to predict throughput and optimize the amount of cashiers.
- fluxquanta 11y ago
  I find the pleasant experience of having a limited choice of quality products at Trader Joe's to be counteracted by the frustration of the tiny, crowded parking lots. Every one I've ever been to has been a mess to park at. Also Trader Joe's is actually owned by Aldi, in case you didn't know.
  - lloydde 11y ago
    here in Alameda we benefit from a large shopping mall parking lot. The other one I frequented for a time is in downtown SF. I recently noticed that https://www.helloenvoy.com/ https://www.helloenvoy.com/ is doing TJ delivery in my area.
    - fluxquanta 11y ago
      Ah. I'm basing my observation on the ones I've been to most frequently in Syracuse and Albany, New York. Both of them seem to always involve a 20 minute parking ordeal. Perhaps it's just me...
      - mikeyouse 11y ago
        Nope, one of the others in San Francisco (on Masonic St.) has the same ridiculous parking ordeal -- At any normal time, the line out of the parking lot blocks a turn lane + one of the traffic lanes onto Masonic Street.
        duderific 11y ago
cobweb 11y ago
I remember hearing or reading an article that said that suggested that making a choice/decision was tiring, and it pays to save your strength for important choices. Rather than deliberate over which beverage you are going to drink in the morning. Similarly if you have a standard place for your wallet, watch and keys you can save brain time by not having to search for them.
- duderific 11y ago
  This is the essence of why we develop habits - it saves our brain power for when we need it during the work day. It's strange but my wife seems to have an endless supply of this choice-making brain power - she never tires of poring over options, whether it be deciding what to eat or shopping online for shoes. I just want to be done with it as quickly as possible; it's almost physically painful for me to go shopping and be confronted by endless choices.
  - cobweb 11y ago
    Does she vocalise her deliberation? Or ask involve you in the opinion making? I love to be made a drink. And love a surprise, partly because it saves me having to make a decision.
bhauer 11y ago
> Perhaps, Corbyn’s political philosophy suggests, what we need is not more choice, but less; not more competition but more monopolies. But before you counter with something along the lines of “Why don’t you go and live in North Korea, pinko?” consider this: Paypal founder Peter Thiel argues that monopolies are good things and that competition, often, doesn’t help either businesses or customers. “In the real world outside economic theory, every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot. Monopoly is therefore not a pathology or an exception. Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.” Competition, in short, is for losers. Corbyn is talking about state monopolies while Theil is talking about "monopolies" in air-quotes such as Microsoft from the 1990s or, well, PayPal from roughly the same era. The emergence of PayPal alternatives since the 1990s and the decline & later rejuvenation of Microsoft illustrate the difference. Yes, a successful business can appeal as a "monopoly," but in a free market, it is rarely an actual monopoly. Apple and other small manufacturers provided alternatives—other choices—even at Microsoft's peak of desktop dominance. I would argue that the highly-successful Apple that we have today was in large part shaped and honed by a decade of fighting for scraps in a market that Microsoft dominated. So if your opinion is that Microsoft was a monopoly in the 1990s, then I think it is reasonable to agree with Theil that monopolies—using that definition—are ultimately a good thing for consumers. But we should not kid ourselves about matters that can end up being so important to life and happiness: a state monopoly expressly disallows even the smallest and (seemingly) inconsequential alternative choices. State monopolies are definitively not the same thing as Microsoft and PayPal.
- Apocryphon 11y ago
  Does a state monopoly necessitate abolishing private options? What about a public default?
smrq 11y ago
Some boardgamers know this as "analysis paralysis", and for such individuals it often points us towards games that have fewer, grander choices as opposed to a thousand minor choices that add up to a grand choice.
- losvedir 11y ago
  That sounds interesting! What are some examples of good games in each category?
sugarraps 11y ago
This is exactly why we end up angry when we try to select a movie to watch on Netflix (and why we end up not watching any!). And also why companies like MUBI are curating (offering) only 30 movies at any given day.
Animats 11y ago
Tesco seems to have overdone it, which has to be running up their inventory costs. That's just a Tesco thing; they're so big that they can't get out of their own way. Safeway in the US may have three or four choices for something, but not 20. Decision paralysis is amusing in kids. I've seen little kids totally freeze up when faced with all the topping options at the frozen yogurt store. It's kind of cute, except that they're holding up the line.
eecks 11y ago
I am surprised Mark Zuckerberg hasn't been mentioned yet. He dresses in the same style clothes every day. His reason? It's one less thing he has to decide upon during his day.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  President Obama has said the same. http://elitedaily.com/money/science-simplicity-successful-people-wear-thing-every-day/849141/ http://elitedaily.com/money/science-simplicity-successful-pe... ‘You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits’ [Obama] said. ‘I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.’ He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions.
vinceguidry 11y ago
I've walked out of restaurants before when there were too many things on the menu. Ethnic restaurants can be forgiven, but an American restaurant that does this gives the impression that they do none of the dishes well.
rspeer 11y ago
I got a serious case of decision fatigue recently while trying to invest. (As a note, this means that I am very much NOT soliciting financial advice with this comment. If you want to tell me a different decision I could have made, especially something I considered such as index funds, you are doing the opposite of helping.) As one of those things you're supposed to do when you realize you're an adult, I decided to automatically invest a portion of my paycheck. There are of course a lot of investment companies who would love to help with that, and first I had to pick one. I picked Merrill Edge because it seemed the easiest to set up the automatic deposit with. At that point, the site told me: Welcome! You want to invest in a mutual fund, right? Here are EIGHT THOUSAND of them you could choose from. Good news! You can even filter them by 20 different criteria that you would know what they mean if you worked in finance! All the highest-rated funds of course have statistically indistinguishable rates of return, so there is no real financial basis to make the decision unless I think I'm clever enough to know who is a better fund manager than who, which of course I'm not. Oh, by the way, they've tried to address the problem. They have a set of "Merrill Edge Select" funds. Of course you get to them in a different interface, you have to choose which jargon-ful category of Select funds you want, and once you do so you still get 20 options in 4 sub-categories. So I could just make an arbitrary decision, and trust that these products are indistinguishable, right? Not so fast. My first arbitrary choice led me to nearly start an automatic investment in a fund that specifically makes socially conservative, "Biblical" investments, and I found this out by googling the name of the fund at the last minute. Egad. I have been through a process that was much better than this. It wasn't on the Web, it involved actually walking to an investment bank's storefront. Aside from unavoidable questions about taxes, they asked me two things: * What year do you plan to retire? * How much risk can you tolerate? And then they picked one fund. Take your 8000 choices and shove them, Merrill Edge. In case I need to say it again: no financial advice please.
- BookmarkSaver 11y ago
  You really should invest in your own personal knowledge of the subject. Going to an investment advisor is a recipe for getting gauged. And this is a really big deal when setting up your plan for retirement. If you are losing small percentage points due to a lazy advisor or the greedy "managed" plan that they set you up with, the effects will be magnified enormously over decades of compound interest. To the tunes of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Serious, everyone should make an effort to get even a basic financial education. It is by far the best investment choice you could make. Relying on "professionals" is unbelievably expensive come your retirement.

193 points by bootload 11y ago

At least when it comes to food, a small selection feels curated, as if the grocery owner is vetting this food for me and saying "These are the jams I find worth your time". A supermarket with 8 brands and 38 total selections didn't take the time to help me. I suppose it's like when non-techies walk into Best Buy and there are 40 laptops to choose from, ranging from Atoms/Celerons to various i7 types. We have all done it before on the phone: "anything but the Celeron... yes it's cheaper... but it's slow, just don't get those" - basically we narrow down the selection significantly by saying "at least 4GB ram, i3,i5,i7". The analogy is not perfect because there's a big price difference in laptops. But making the consumer feel "safer" with their choice by eliminating the really bad choices up front lets them shop worry-free. This small selection thing can be bad too, though - I for one hate shopping at Walmart because I know without a doubt that whatever I am purchasing is the absolute lowest common denominator in terms of quality. They might have 2 different types of lawn chairs, and you better believe that both will fall apart just after the 1 year warranty is up. It all comes down to trust; if you trust the store in their selection, you'll enjoy shopping there.

pimlottc 11y ago
Indeed, this point came up in a conversation about Whole Foods. Sure, they are often overpriced, and you can find many of the same brands and products in other stores, but by shopping at Whole Foods, you can at least have confidence that any random product on the shelf is at a reasonably high level of quality.
- osi 11y ago
  That's exactly why my wife likes to shop there. (And Trader Joe's for similar reasons)

webdigi 11y ago

There is an awesome TED talk by Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice. https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_c... Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.

colund 11y ago
I was just going to post the Google Talk with the same guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ELAkV2fC-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ELAkV2fC-I. Choice is good as long as people don't feel like they need to optimize, but instead feel they can settle for good enough.
- scholia 11y ago
  The linked story mentions "professor of social theory Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice" and links to his book.
- barney54 11y ago
  And here some of the other side--that the paradox of choice might be s myth: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-more-why-the-paradox-of-choice-might-be-a-myth/278658/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-...
adventured 11y ago
No doubt Barry Schwartz has never lived without choice. He's wrong, and obviously so. Freedom of choice is vastly superior, in every possible way, to the alternative. A nicer Soviet-era grocery store: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWTGsUyv8IE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWTGsUyv8IE The stories are overly plentiful of people that were held in low-choice captivity in the former USSR, breaking down in tears upon seeing western grocery stores. I know several people who lived under Communism in Romania, their experience was identical. I'd suspect that very few people arguing against choice, have ever lived in a situation where they were actually deprived of it. They're essentially spoiled brats.

joosters 11y ago

I just read this article about the lack of choice in cars: https://medium.com/@ade3/the-zombie-mobile-b03932ac971d https://medium.com/@ade3/the-zombie-mobile-b03932ac971d Which effectively makes the same point: it's easier to sell something with fewer choices.

vukmir 11y ago

The standard line is that choice is good for us, that it confers on us freedom, personal responsibility, self-determination, autonomy and lots of other things that don’t help when you’re standing before a towering aisle of water bottles, paralysed and increasingly dehydrated, unable to choose. That's just ridiculous! According to the author, a towering aisle of water battles reduces you to the Buridan's ass.[0] Yes, there are some hard choices that will force you to think hard and put you through emotional hell. Yes, there are choices that will make you stuck in analysis paralysis, but choosing which bottle of water to buy isn't one. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan%27s_ass

lifeisstillgood 11y ago
But which bottle of water defines me as a person? Will you judge me badly for choosing water that did not filter through organic soil?
- mattlutze 11y ago
  Are organic soil filters a core tenant of our tribe? How do I balance my need for sport electrolytes with the inevitable guilt of consumerism that follows?
  - jboons 11y ago
    Just eat your fruits and veggies.
jamesrom 11y ago
Nope. Making a simile with Buridan's ass is a strawman. It's not that you wont be able to decide (yes, that would be ridiculous). It's that you will be less satisfied with the choice you make because it's harder for your to quantify the opportunity cost given so many alternatives.
- vukmir 11y ago
  From the article: you’re standing before a towering aisle of water bottles, paralysed and increasingly dehydrated, unable to choose looks like the definition of Buridan's ass to me. I'm familiar with the Schwartz's paradox of choice, but the author is pushing it too far. Does anyone really agonize over trivial choices such as which bottle of water to buy? Is anyone really getting dehydrated and unable to chose among many alternatives? Does anyone even considers opportunity cost when making such trivial choices? My problem is not with the paradox of choice, my problem is with the author's trivialization of it.

kingkawn 11y ago

its not the choice its the way we make them.

lifeisstillgood 11y ago

We can all reduce our choices upfront, but it seems rare that we let other people explicitly curate our lives. Would anyone here let me for example, set their weekly menu, choose their lunchtime gym sessions, restrict their Netflix choices to my favourite films? Would you basically let me curate your lifestyle? For a fee?

cantrevealname 11y ago
Curators of weekly menu: Yelp if you're going out, New York Times "Recipes of the Day" if you're staying home Curator of gym sessions: private fitness trainer you hired Curator of films: Netflix's own "suggestions for you" section, Rotten Tomatoes, movie critics
- lifeisstillgood 11y ago
  Still too much choice and still I have to decide am I going to choose the NYT, the good housekeeping, the Jamie Oliver, the xyz diet. Still too much choice - much easier to give up a huge chunk of it to someone else - especially in days of online ordering where I just don't have to do anything like go get the ingredients I think the amalgamated curation and default ordering seems ... Interesting
pjc50 11y ago
It's not unusual for people to delegate these choices, especially the "menu" and "TV", to a member of their family, when the choice-outcome applies to the whole family and not just the individual.

ck2 11y ago

google "decision fatigue" https://google.com/search?q=decision-fatigue https://google.com/search?q=decision-fatigue fascinating little thing I recently learned about if you find yourself wearing the same clothes often, it's a sign

ohthehugemanate 11y ago

There are so many assumptions and logical problems in this article's reasoning... it's distressing to read. First we assume that choosing to purchase jam is empirically better than choosing not to purchase jam. And we ignore the question of how the jam selection is made, when the supermarket chooses for you: what is driving the supermarket's selection of which single brand to offer? Is it price to quality ratio? Price? Partner deals on other brands? When I start a new jam company, do I aim to make a happy consumer, or a happy grocery store manager? This doesn't seem optimal for the consumer at all. The argument is later 'bolstered' with the example of jeans; we're told that they SHOULD be "the ill-fitting sort", that “The secret to happiness is low expectations.” If you expect shitty jam, the supermarket can remove choice to satisfy your expectation. For that matter, so can the market of jam providers. At last we get the example of pensions, where we can at least agree on the basic point that not choosing is definitely worse than choosing poorly. We're advised that employers should choose for the employees to prevent this outcome. Again we leave aside the question of how the employer selects a 'one-size-fits-all' pension plan. Does she optimize for the best pension for employees, or for the cheapest plan up front? And how does that change the behavior of pension plan companies? Generally, choice in the market is an important driver of improving real and perceived value for consumers. Perhaps there are alternative solutions to 'choice paralysis' that don't involve sacrificing quality. Off the top of my head, expert advisors are a better solution than what the article offers. There are hundreds of wines at my local store, but I have no trouble making a choice with the guidance of the sommelier. There are thousands of health insurance options where I live (in Germany), but I'm confident that I make the right choice for my family with the guidance of my Versicherungsberater (insurance advisor). Interestingly this is a field that is difficult to automate, not least because humans trust human recommendations more than machine ones. I can imagine this author would praise the coming "advisor economy" as the solution to fears of machine-learning-driven unemployment. In short: everyone accepts the premise that "choice paralysis" is real, and that it causes people to make sub-optimal choices. It's an enormous leap however, to get to "therefore having no choice, and expecting shitty outcomes, is the best answer."

coldtea 11y ago
>It's an enormous leap however, to get to "therefore having no choice, and expecting shitty outcomes, is the best answer." Only the article never says that. Low expectations here is not a stand-in for "shitty", it's "don't overthink and overanalyze your jam purchase to get some near absolute best etc".

bsmith 11y ago

This reminds me of one of Tim Ferriss' essays, The Choice-Minimal Lifestyle: 6 Formulas for More Output and Less Overwhelm: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2008/02/06/the-choice-minimal-lifestyle-6-formulas-for-more-output-and-less-overwhelm/ http://fourhourworkweek.com/2008/02/06/the-choice-minimal-li... There are quite a few practical tips in there to help decrease the sense of overwhelm from having too many choices.

lucozade 11y ago

When one of my children was about 4 or 5 we visited friends in Abu Dhabi. We went out for brunch in one of the 6* hotels there. The pudding table was enormous with 3 chocolate fountains, piles of cakes, the works. My son went up to the table, stood there for about 3 minutes, then burst into tears. Just the thought of deciding what he wasn't going to eat was too much for him.

yandreiy88 11y ago
maybe it was happy tears. :)

VLM 11y ago

Obviously there's an engineer mindset where pulling up a parametric search of RF inductors at an electronic component supplier bringing up over 25K results brings forth a smile and happiness not terror or paralysis. I was thrilled to see over 25K results and with some more parametric searching I found one with a self resonance above 4 GHz and over 100 mA limit and blah blah blah and the GPS preamp ended up working perfectly in the end. It was so comforting seeing 25K results, knowing my project would almost certainly succeed. It certainly extends out of the workplace and into individual life. Choice paralysis might be a legacy declining way of looking at the world, like nationalism or racism or imperialism are no longer acceptable in the current year's Overton window. Its like people who insist they won't talk to machines or won't use the internet to pay bills or won't learn how to read. Well, get used to choice or become obsolete.

venomsnake 11y ago
Nationalism is on a global rise, so is imperialism and racism is still healthy attitude towards outsiders worldwide. Seems to me that 6 900 000 000 haven't gotten that memo.
pjc50 11y ago
Supermarkets don't have parametric search.

yummyfajitas 11y ago

The Guardian is reading far too much into Tesco's actions. Following the Paradox of Choice, the effect was widely studied and found to not be particularly robust. The classic jam study (cited by this article) failed to replicate. There are various circumstances when having more choices increases sales as well (e.g., a higher priced option that no one takes can cause more sales of the low priced choice). Even the author of "Paradox of Choice" admits the science is far from settled. I've been to Tesco. From a consumer's perspective, it's amazing - I really wish I had a place like Tesco where I am. Most likely the reason Tesco is reducing choices is because stocking more SKUs is expensive, but at the end of the day the customer buys the same quantity of cheese. Choice is fantastic for the consumer, particularly the consumer with minority tastes. If you are an Indian or Nigerian person living in the UK and you are hungry for some home food, Tesco's got you covered. I'm not even going to discuss the blatant cheerleading for state monopolies and Corbyn. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/is-the-famous-paradox-of-choic/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/is-the-famous-parad... http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9cebd444-cd9c-11de-8162-00144feabdc0.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9cebd444-cd9c-11de-8162-00144feabd... http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-more-why-the-paradox-of-choice-might-be-a-myth/278658/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-is-...

djaychela 11y ago
I'm not sure I'd agree. Personally I don't find choice debilatating, but I know plenty of people who do - my girfriend finds it very difficult to make choices, and has to research things to the Nth degree to ensure she's not making a wrong one, and a lot of the kids I teach find options anxiety to be a real problem. However, when faced with an area where there is choice but I have little information (such as buying a given spice in Tesco and there are 3 seemingly equivalent choices) I have experienced this. I'd agree about the tagging on of the Corbyn bit at the end - I don't think it has anything to do with the article - but I'm not sure that the high priced choice you cite is necessarily the same thing?
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  I also know plenty of people who find lack of choice debilitating. Ramanujan - an Indian living in the UK was debilitated by the absence of Idlis. (In the modern world, Tesco has him covered.) I'm certainly unhappy in northwest Delhi when I can't find a decent dosa, pasta or croissant [1]. Minorities exist, and some of them really need those choices that paralyze your girlfriend. I think a better solution is for your girlfriend to learn coping skills than for my ex-girlfriend to suffer with Indian shampoo that doesn't work for African hair. [1] Or at least such things are 1.5 hours away in Khan market.

matt_morgan 11y ago

Freedom of choice is what we got Freedom from choice is what we want https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVGINIsLnqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVGINIsLnqU

rcarrigan87 11y ago

Buying decisions can have so many confounding variables (emotion, status, cost, quality) this article draws some very loose conclusions on relatively little data. Less choice can be an interesting A/B test for a business, but I wouldn't be surprised if results feel more random than this article suggests.

Grue3 11y ago

Why are the bigger stores so popular then? I actually like choosing the product that I think has the best price/quality ratio. I compare prices per unit of weight and everything. In the end I'm satisfied that I made a seemingly rational choice. When there's only one choice I can't help but feel it must be overpriced since there's nothing else to compare it to.

learnstats2 11y ago
>In the end I'm satisfied that I made a seemingly rational choice. This is very often a false choice - if you're in one store, you are likely choosing between a Unilever product and a Unilever product, for example.
k__ 11y ago
Maybe people just think it's better to have more options? Also, I once read, that more options aren't necessarily bad. For example if you can buy a car as diesel or petrol and red or white, but the color doesn't affect the fuel type, it's okay. But if you could buy a car as diesel or petrol but only the petrol in red or white and the diesel just in white (or a completely different color) this leads to stress, because one decision lets you miss on the other options.
pjc50 11y ago
Range isn't quite the same as choice: the smaller the store, the more likely it is to not have a particular product category at all.
kardos 11y ago
> Why are the bigger stores so popular then? So you only need to make one stop to get everything you need

Angostura 11y ago

I agree. The other day, I stood in the supermarket contemplating the 20 different types of Colgate toothpaste. Did I want Whitening? No. Sensitive Teeth? No. Those were easy choices. What about the Anti-Cavity version? Now that sounds good. But, but I also have some gum disease, so perhaps Gum Care is the right choice? But what about the formulation that promised Harder Teeth? Perhaps I should just get Colgate Total. But does Total have as much anti-cavity stuff as the Anti-Cavity variant? does it have as much as much gum care stuff as the Gum Care variant? It costs the same as both, so maybe its kind of a bit of everything and not as good as anything. In the end I bought Aquafresh. In the old days I thought that Total was the best I could get - now I'm not so sure.

buro9 11y ago
I have done that same dance too many times.
yummyfajitas 11y ago
My ex-girlfriend had the opposite problem. She stood in the market and contemplated only a few choices in shampoo - basically regular and hair fall rescue. She went with regular. Her hair got all messed up - apparently Indian and African hair are actually very different and Africans actually need fancy African shampoo. At the end of the day she did have only one choice - cut her hair short and spend 1000rs/month (plus about 6 hours) having a Nigerian woman give her an (illegal) weave. Choice sucks when you are part of the majority who's needs are catered to.
- pjc50 11y ago
  (illegal) weave Illegal hairstyles? There has to be a bizarre story behind this.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Occupational licensing and immigration restrictions mean black ladies need to turn to the black market. Even in the US this is an issue: http://madamenoire.com/501738/texas-federal-judge-rules-hair-braiding-laws-unconstitutional/ http://madamenoire.com/501738/texas-federal-judge-rules-hair...

baldfat 11y ago

I love choice and this article seems to ring true for "most people." Linux is my preferred OS and I hate Apple's structure. I am in the minority. I also like programming languages were there are several different ways to do things (Looking at R) People don't like choice they like "Just Works." To me the is "Just Works" means not that important to me or I don't want to know more than the minimum.

rndmind 11y ago
I am with you. I hate apple's structure, I'm strictly a linux user. I disagree with both sides of this article when I say that none of this matters, non-choice exists, you can choose not to participate entirely.

gopowerranger 11y ago

I've been in the fast food business for 30 years (an investment). When I bought someone else's failing location, one of the first things I noticed was that his chip rack had 12 varieties to choose from. One of the first things I did was reduce that choice to the five best selling items. Sales of chips went up about 25% immediately.

arethuza 11y ago
Out of interest, how did you choose 5? Did you experiment and measure or observations of other stores?
- borkabrak 11y ago
  "five best selling items" I assume he meant the five that were the best-sellers at his own store.
- gopowerranger 11y ago
  Weekly inventory showed how much of each item we sold. The previous owner would keep in stock things that might only have a few purchased per week. His excuse was only to have variety.

stegosaurus 11y ago

I tend to agree in a wider sense (knowing that I could live basically anywhere in the world, for example, makes life seem short and that's stressful). But the supermarket example doesn't work for me at all. Bottled water? Cheapest price tag, done. It's water. Most items can be reduced to this (tinned beans, frozen vegetables, etc) because it's inconsequential to me. Big ticket items like a laptop or a car - sure, that's a decision I'll have to live with for a long time, so it makes sense for me to think long and hard.

afsina 11y ago

Article says: "Not only is Tesco reducing its number of products, but the new leader of the Labour party has just been elected on a political platform that, in part, challenges the rhetoric of choice. Jeremy Corbyn proposes to renationalise not just the rail network but public utilities (gas, electricity and water), partly in the hope that the reduction of choice will provide a fairer, less anxiety-inducing experience for their users." Two things, First, is the author really that naive to think that the reason Corbyn wants to renationalise energy distribution is to reduce the stress on consumer from too many choices? Second I am wondering how many people are anxious about the choice of their rail or energy distribution company. And after sprinkling the almost unrelated Thiel speech, this became an absurd ending to an already shaky article.

arethuza 11y ago
The idea of re-nationalising the rail network is actually quite popular: https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/05/11/why-do-people-support-rail-nationalisation/ https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/05/11/why-do-people-support-r... NB I just learned about this yesterday - and was quite surprised. In that respect Corbyn might actually be tapping into a genuine change in public opinion.
- eertami 11y ago
  The only people who are _for_ privatisation of railways are those wealthy enough that they don't need to use rail travel. Privatising public infrastructure is absurd, especially when you exactly build an adjacent railway line to compete.
  - afsina 11y ago
    Privatizing public infrastructure is not absurd. They just get the management from government's hands with the promise that they can do it with more efficiently. Even if it is far from perfect, they do a better job. Just anecdotal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail#Impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatisation_of_British_Rail#...

supersan 11y ago

This is also one of the reasons why it's not a good idea to give 10 different pricing options for your startup. Too much choice and the user gets paralyzed and doesn't buy anything.

chrisan 11y ago

Does this apply to javascript frameworks?

deskamess 11y ago

Canadian residents who have experienced amazon.ca vs amazon.com know this is not true.

kruhft 11y ago
Until you fill up your cart and go to checkout and see that none of the items you want to buy will ship to Canada.

cstross 11y ago

The foundation of Apple'a current success is based on this principle -- curation of a selection of best options from a wide possible range makes buying decisions easier for customers than giving them the whole phase space. Before Steve Jobs returned in the late 90s, Apple's Mac range was a hot mess. Apple was trying to compete with the entire range of PC manufacturers, so in addition to licensed third-party Mac clones, they were making multiple ranges of desktop Mac with overlapping specs, on the principle that they could occupy one shelf slot per machine in Fry's or Target with each model. So you had the Centris, the Performa, and the Quadra ranges, with high, middle, and low end machines in each range, educational and professional media authoring variants, and the powerbook range ... Jobs returned and priority #1 was to staunch the cash haemorrhage. Rationalizing the product range and supply chain was a huge part of this. So he drew a simple diagram. X-axis: consumer and professional. Y-axis: desktop and portable. Four models would occupy the entire grid, with roughly three specification levels in each (think Goldilocks and the Three Bears). This gave us the iBook and iMac machines (consumer), and the Powerbook and Mac Pro machines (professional), with differentiation based on CPU speed/memory/disk capacity within each cell. This made the choice of which machine to buy vastly easier on the customer; it was glaringly obvious which model you wanted, all you had to do was decide how much speed/memory/disk capacity you needed, and that was it, rather than trying to figure out what the difference was between a Centris 630 and a Quadra 630AV (hint: RGB video out, 10MHz, and about $250) and so on ... This turned the precipitous decline in Mac sales around. It took years to build up to the current powerhouse, but it staunched the arterial bleeding -- and all by giving the customers less choice, not more.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Note that these are mostly benefits for Apple, not for the consumer. As a consumer, I need a 256GB SSD and 16GB ram. My only choice is to spend $2000 on other macbook pro features I don't need. When I went with a custom PC builder instead (lots of choices - first pick the chassis, then pick the CPU, then pick the RAM, then pick the disk), I got what I needed for $1300. I don't often bill out at $700/hour (probably the total time I spent on this choice), so Apple's lack of choice certainly wouldn't have helped me.
- 11y ago

klunger 11y ago

"Who wouldn’t rather choose to lie in a bath of biscuits playing Minecraft?" Indeed!

cLeEOGPw 11y ago

I could explain it as "More choices increases possibility space and in turn increases effort required to make a decision. And incomplete consideration leaves the feeling that you may have made not the most optimal decision, and both cases increases stress."

dschiptsov 11y ago

Because too much choice seems like an intuitive negative heuristic, because it contradicts the fundamental Nature's way to avoid redundancy.

icebraining 11y ago
Curiously, this was published just this month: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0137974 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

lloydde 11y ago

The article reminds me of the superior grocery shopping experience at Trader Joes where they only have one choice in each category. They complement this by having more niche and seasonal items. The physical footprint is much smaller and memorable. Importantly, these details contribute to them being able to predict throughput and optimize the amount of cashiers.

fluxquanta 11y ago
I find the pleasant experience of having a limited choice of quality products at Trader Joe's to be counteracted by the frustration of the tiny, crowded parking lots. Every one I've ever been to has been a mess to park at. Also Trader Joe's is actually owned by Aldi, in case you didn't know.
- lloydde 11y ago
  here in Alameda we benefit from a large shopping mall parking lot. The other one I frequented for a time is in downtown SF. I recently noticed that https://www.helloenvoy.com/ https://www.helloenvoy.com/ is doing TJ delivery in my area.
  - fluxquanta 11y ago
    Ah. I'm basing my observation on the ones I've been to most frequently in Syracuse and Albany, New York. Both of them seem to always involve a 20 minute parking ordeal. Perhaps it's just me...
    - mikeyouse 11y ago
      Nope, one of the others in San Francisco (on Masonic St.) has the same ridiculous parking ordeal -- At any normal time, the line out of the parking lot blocks a turn lane + one of the traffic lanes onto Masonic Street.
      - duderific 11y ago

cobweb 11y ago

I remember hearing or reading an article that said that suggested that making a choice/decision was tiring, and it pays to save your strength for important choices. Rather than deliberate over which beverage you are going to drink in the morning. Similarly if you have a standard place for your wallet, watch and keys you can save brain time by not having to search for them.

duderific 11y ago
This is the essence of why we develop habits - it saves our brain power for when we need it during the work day. It's strange but my wife seems to have an endless supply of this choice-making brain power - she never tires of poring over options, whether it be deciding what to eat or shopping online for shoes. I just want to be done with it as quickly as possible; it's almost physically painful for me to go shopping and be confronted by endless choices.
- cobweb 11y ago
  Does she vocalise her deliberation? Or ask involve you in the opinion making? I love to be made a drink. And love a surprise, partly because it saves me having to make a decision.

bhauer 11y ago

> Perhaps, Corbyn’s political philosophy suggests, what we need is not more choice, but less; not more competition but more monopolies. But before you counter with something along the lines of “Why don’t you go and live in North Korea, pinko?” consider this: Paypal founder Peter Thiel argues that monopolies are good things and that competition, often, doesn’t help either businesses or customers. “In the real world outside economic theory, every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot. Monopoly is therefore not a pathology or an exception. Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.” Competition, in short, is for losers. Corbyn is talking about state monopolies while Theil is talking about "monopolies" in air-quotes such as Microsoft from the 1990s or, well, PayPal from roughly the same era. The emergence of PayPal alternatives since the 1990s and the decline & later rejuvenation of Microsoft illustrate the difference. Yes, a successful business can appeal as a "monopoly," but in a free market, it is rarely an actual monopoly. Apple and other small manufacturers provided alternatives—other choices—even at Microsoft's peak of desktop dominance. I would argue that the highly-successful Apple that we have today was in large part shaped and honed by a decade of fighting for scraps in a market that Microsoft dominated. So if your opinion is that Microsoft was a monopoly in the 1990s, then I think it is reasonable to agree with Theil that monopolies—using that definition—are ultimately a good thing for consumers. But we should not kid ourselves about matters that can end up being so important to life and happiness: a state monopoly expressly disallows even the smallest and (seemingly) inconsequential alternative choices. State monopolies are definitively not the same thing as Microsoft and PayPal.

Apocryphon 11y ago
Does a state monopoly necessitate abolishing private options? What about a public default?

smrq 11y ago

Some boardgamers know this as "analysis paralysis", and for such individuals it often points us towards games that have fewer, grander choices as opposed to a thousand minor choices that add up to a grand choice.

losvedir 11y ago
That sounds interesting! What are some examples of good games in each category?

sugarraps 11y ago

This is exactly why we end up angry when we try to select a movie to watch on Netflix (and why we end up not watching any!). And also why companies like MUBI are curating (offering) only 30 movies at any given day.

Animats 11y ago

Tesco seems to have overdone it, which has to be running up their inventory costs. That's just a Tesco thing; they're so big that they can't get out of their own way. Safeway in the US may have three or four choices for something, but not 20. Decision paralysis is amusing in kids. I've seen little kids totally freeze up when faced with all the topping options at the frozen yogurt store. It's kind of cute, except that they're holding up the line.

eecks 11y ago

I am surprised Mark Zuckerberg hasn't been mentioned yet. He dresses in the same style clothes every day. His reason? It's one less thing he has to decide upon during his day.

nommm-nommm 11y ago
President Obama has said the same. http://elitedaily.com/money/science-simplicity-successful-people-wear-thing-every-day/849141/ http://elitedaily.com/money/science-simplicity-successful-pe... ‘You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits’ [Obama] said. ‘I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.’ He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions.

vinceguidry 11y ago

I've walked out of restaurants before when there were too many things on the menu. Ethnic restaurants can be forgiven, but an American restaurant that does this gives the impression that they do none of the dishes well.

rspeer 11y ago

I got a serious case of decision fatigue recently while trying to invest. (As a note, this means that I am very much NOT soliciting financial advice with this comment. If you want to tell me a different decision I could have made, especially something I considered such as index funds, you are doing the opposite of helping.) As one of those things you're supposed to do when you realize you're an adult, I decided to automatically invest a portion of my paycheck. There are of course a lot of investment companies who would love to help with that, and first I had to pick one. I picked Merrill Edge because it seemed the easiest to set up the automatic deposit with. At that point, the site told me: Welcome! You want to invest in a mutual fund, right? Here are EIGHT THOUSAND of them you could choose from. Good news! You can even filter them by 20 different criteria that you would know what they mean if you worked in finance! All the highest-rated funds of course have statistically indistinguishable rates of return, so there is no real financial basis to make the decision unless I think I'm clever enough to know who is a better fund manager than who, which of course I'm not. Oh, by the way, they've tried to address the problem. They have a set of "Merrill Edge Select" funds. Of course you get to them in a different interface, you have to choose which jargon-ful category of Select funds you want, and once you do so you still get 20 options in 4 sub-categories. So I could just make an arbitrary decision, and trust that these products are indistinguishable, right? Not so fast. My first arbitrary choice led me to nearly start an automatic investment in a fund that specifically makes socially conservative, "Biblical" investments, and I found this out by googling the name of the fund at the last minute. Egad. I have been through a process that was much better than this. It wasn't on the Web, it involved actually walking to an investment bank's storefront. Aside from unavoidable questions about taxes, they asked me two things: * What year do you plan to retire? * How much risk can you tolerate? And then they picked one fund. Take your 8000 choices and shove them, Merrill Edge. In case I need to say it again: no financial advice please.

BookmarkSaver 11y ago
You really should invest in your own personal knowledge of the subject. Going to an investment advisor is a recipe for getting gauged. And this is a really big deal when setting up your plan for retirement. If you are losing small percentage points due to a lazy advisor or the greedy "managed" plan that they set you up with, the effects will be magnified enormously over decades of compound interest. To the tunes of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Serious, everyone should make an effort to get even a basic financial education. It is by far the best investment choice you could make. Relying on "professionals" is unbelievably expensive come your retirement.